


A Void In My Hearts

by bananasandroses (achuislemochroi)



Series: Whofic [21]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Epistolary, F/M, Tenth Doctor Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-20
Updated: 2009-07-20
Packaged: 2018-01-24 05:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1593647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achuislemochroi/pseuds/bananasandroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martha learns a few home truths about the nature of the Doctor’s relationship with Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Void In My Hearts

_And it's no complaint you hear tonight,  
and it's not some pilgrim who's seen the light —_

She’s been in here before, on rare occasion; the Doctor doesn’t like people in his room, or so he’s always said when the subject’s come up before. But he’s asked her specifically to come in this afternoon and bring him his journal. The book lies open; she can smell the ink still, barely dry on the page, and even though she knows she oughtn’t it’s the work of a moment to have a look at what he’s written.

It never even occurs to her to question why the writing’s in English. He’s an alien, there’s no way that English is his first language. But her eyes are too busy skimming the page to wonder at the choice of language.

_I miss you._

The first sentence she sees shocks her, and for a second – until reality kicks in – she finds herself wondering how he could miss her when she’s still there. She reads on, careful not to smudge the ink but desperate to know more.

_It isn’t the same without you here. I know, I know; I’m the Time Lord and you’re the human, and I should be used to this by now, but I can’t help thinking there’s something different, something new, about it this time._

_I wish I hadn’t made such a pig’s ear of it, the one time it would really have meant something for me to have told you how dear you have always been to me. But I did, and I missed my chance to say it, and I’ll never get that chance again. I can write it here, in this journal, but what’s the point of that when the person I desperately want to read it never can?_

“It’s about Rose, isn’t it?” she says out loud. “I might have _known_.” The tone of her voice, and the bitchiness she can hear in it, makes her feel guilty about making assumptions about somebody she’s never met. She gives herself a mental shake and carries on.

_You’d heard me tell you that we could never see each other again, and yet rather than focus on what that meant for you, you’d gone ahead and asked me what I’d do next, and whether it would be on my own._

_And in answer to that question – yes, I’m on my own._

_Mainly because I like it better that way, now that you aren’t here; being on my own helps me focus on the memories and, although they hurt to remember, I’d rather the pain than to forget you and what you are to me and be happy._

_Can you understand that?_

_I don’t know why I’m asking you questions here. It isn’t as if you could answer them. But even if this is the only place I ever admit to it, your departure has left a huge void in my hearts._

_A void. Ironic, isn’t it, since that’s how I almost lost you in the first place? I know you don’t want to be where you are any more than I want you to be there, but I hope you’ve thanked Pete for what he did. I’ll never be able to be grateful enough to him for being there._

_And anyway, no, that’s not right: there’s no void in my hearts, because you’ll stay there for ever now you’re there. The void is in my daily life, because that is evermore reminding my hearts of your absence._

There are blotches on the journal here, and she suspects it’s where he’s been unable to stop himself weeping over it. The words hurt to read; they’re the words of a man obviously deeply in love with someone he’ll not see again. A man who is equally obviously not ready for another relationship with anyone – and, if she’s honest with herself, that includes her.

_There’s more than one way of saying the words, and when I think of how many opportunities I let slide through my fingers because I always thought a better one would come along someday I could weep for the waste of it. I’d like to think you knew, without me telling you, but I’m no longer lucky – or should that be naïf? – enough to think that that were true._

“What are you doing?”

She nearly drops the journal in shock. He sounds amused rather than angry, which she supposes is something, but she still doesn’t know where to look. Meeting his eyes with her own has never seemed so difficult.

“I —”

She can’t come up with a convincing excuse, because there isn’t one. Has she just landed herself a one-way trip back home?

She finds herself blushing profusely – she can feel the burning in her cheeks – as she looks from the journal in her hand to the floor in front of the Doctor and back again. She hands the journal over, suddenly not wanting to have anything to do with it any longer. And then she says what's been in her mind since practically the first moment she’d set eyes on that first line:

“You know exactly what I've been doing; you just want me to _say_ it, to make it real.”

He doesn’t say a word, and just _looks_ at her in that odd way he has that makes her feel as if he’s looking _through_ her rather than _at_ her. He won’t quite meet her eyes, though, and although she can’t prove it she’d be willing to wager that he is thinking of _her_ again. That still makes her feel mutinous, and she doesn’t want to dig too deeply to find out why that is, just in case she doesn’t like the answers. She doesn’t like what she’s finding out about the Doctor just now, after all.

He sighs softly then and, despite herself, she can’t seem to stop reacting to him. She lifts her eyes so they meet his and she gasps at the raw pain she sees.

“I’m so sorry, Martha.”

She doesn’t say anything; she blinks, and nods slightly, encouraging him to continue. She has the feeling he needs to get it out – whatever it is – even if she thinks this time she’s highly unlikely to want to know what he has to say.

He scratches the back of his head – a trick she’s noticed he tends to play when he’s stuck for what to say. And from a man with a vocabulary and intelligence as great as _his_ is, she doubts that happens very often.

“I don’t know where to start, really; I owe you an apology for so much it’s difficult to pick just one thing. I suppose ... maybe it’s easiest to pick the smallest one, and go from there. Because, as you might have guessed, I had an ulterior motive for making you come and bring me this.”

He holds up the journal, and all of a sudden she _knows_ what he’s going to say. Although she doesn’t have any choice, she thinks she’d rather be just about anywhere else at the moment.

“I —”

She can’t get the words out; this is perhaps just as well, as nothing she can say will make this conversation any less embarrassing for either of them.

“It’s all right.” His voice sounds slightly strained, shaded with a hint of the pain she saw in his eyes earlier. “Most of this is my fault anyway – no, Martha,” he continues, as she tries to suggest she is equally culpable, “it really is.”

He folds the journal, closed now, to his chest and holds it there with an arm crossed over it and the other one very close by in what she knows to be a defensive position. She wonders if he’s even aware of the fact that his thumb is caressing the journal’s cover. It crosses her mind for a moment that this is the closest he can get to the woman he is so clearly in love with, and she winces internally. How could she not have seen this coming?

“Martha, I know you have feelings for me.” He says it quietly, matter-of-factly, but there’s a wobble in his voice and, although she is deliberately not looking at him, she suspects he is fighting for self-control. “I’ve always known. And I’ve tried to ignore them, if I’m honest with you, because I didn’t want to deal with them. I still don’t, but it’s not fair to you for me to keep ignoring their existence.”

Aware she is blushing, and not trusting herself to look at his face, her eyes go instead to his chest – and the journal, which he hasn’t once stopped caressing with his thumb since he took it back from her.

“I won’t be to you what you want me to be, Martha. I _can’t_.”

“Rose?” she asks, steadfastly, for a wonder managing to keep any hint of acrimony out of her voice.

He nods; suddenly his voice turns fierce, almost angry, yet choked with so much pain that Martha finds it difficult to believe that the emotion is really aimed at her. He is also gripping tightly to the journal as if his life depends on it, and she _knows_ that’s a bad sign.

“I’ve nothing else left of her, except the memory of what we are to each other and the knowledge of how I feel about her. And I’ll not be made to give them up, too. I _won’t_!”

His voice and face both break on that last word. She wants to comfort him, but she suspects she’s the last person he wants to see just then; the maelstrom in his eyes convinces her of that and she backs out of the room to give him the privacy he so clearly needs. Martha fumbles for the handle of the door but before she can get it closed she hears the broken, lonely sound of him calling out Rose’s name and she knows that any chance she’d ever had with him, slender to the point of non-existence as she’d known it to be, is gone and all that’s left is damage-control.

For her _and_ for him. She presses her head against the closed door for a few moments before turning away. She’s realising, finally when it’s too late – that he’s damaged beyond her ability to even begin to fix him.

And that she’s just lost her last best hope of being able to do even that.

_It’s a cold and it’s a lonely Hallelujah_

  


**Author's Note:**

> The italicised quotes at the beginning and end of the fic come from the song _Hallelujah_ and belong to Leonard Cohen.


End file.
